Sharpen sales leadership skills to empower employees to their best performance.

Make the board and shareholders happy.

Change is Inevitable; Success is Not.

Most Bankers Have Only Known “Good Times.”Is It Time To Wake Up?

Any banker with less than 25 years of experience has enjoyed the benefits of a two-decade plus economic growth cycle. Strong economic expansion, a stock market that has soared to new heights and record low interest rates created “the perfect storm” in a good way, making it relatively easy for financial institutions to put earning assets on the books. Even with these favorable conditions:

50% to 60% of bankers are unable to hit sales goals.

80% of a bank’s customers are unprofitable.

80% of prospects are closed between the 5th and 20th sales attempt — yet 48% of bankers will never make a follow-up call after the 1st sales call if there’s no immediate need.

With greater frequency, banks are losing customers to online lenders and payment platforms and other digital players.

As a result of a heavy real estate focus, banks have largely become transactional commodities.

The Journey Begins April 16th From Transaction-Focused Lenders To Relationship-Focused Trusted Advisors

Ray Adler is nationally recognized as one of the foremost authorities on sales culture evolution, leadership and sales development in financial institutions. He is the CEO and President of BTI Growth Advisors, a firm that has been producing tangible improvements in financial institutions around the country for 19 years.

Ray helps identify and implement the right strategic changes needed to take their institution’s sales efforts to the next level. Ray’s guidance is comprehensive, and includes targeting and creating quality new commercial relationships, deepening existing relationships, strengthening sales leadership, and much more.

The Sales Honing® Academy evolved out of the perceived need to:

Provide institutions with a substantial and sustained lift in performance, not typically achieved by live “event style” sales training.

Help regional, business and community institutions compete more favorably against the big banks.

Develop a research-based, sales improvement process aligned with how adults learn and change their behaviors.

Let the Sales Honing® Academy help transition your commercial banking team from transaction-focused lenders to relationship-focused consultants and trusted advisors capable of creating full banking relationships. Through utilization of a consultative sales process combined with stronger negotiation skills, your bankers will close business with greater net interest and non-interest income.

“I’m at 200% of my annual goal and it’s only July. Ray’s taught me how to be productive rather than busy.”

— Sam Othus, Vice President, Relationship Manager, Banner Bank

"Sale Honing consultative sales strategies helped me to close a $510,000 loan with 84-basis point premium over the competition.”

— Sean Puckett, SVP, Mechanics Bank

The Sales Honing® Academy –

A Next Generation Sales Improvement Process for A New Economic Cycle

The Sales Honing® Academy is a radical departure from old-school, event style sales training. Most sales training gives people a lot of information in a very compressed time period. Some find it overwhelming; most quickly forget the material. In fact, research shows that without reinforcement, 80 to 90 percent of the material from such training will be forgotten within one month. Since sales training isn’t cheap, that’s a lot of wasted money!

The Sales Honing® Academy “sales refinement and practice-based” sales improvement process aligns with the research on how adults learn best.

“Bite-sized” Content — Research shows that employees better digest and utilize content that is focused on bite-size chunks of content with specific action plans that are easily followed and allow employee to practice these behavior “refinements”

Continuous Learning — Employees learn and remember much better when information is presented over evenly-spaced intervals, rather than all at once or at infrequent rates. Therefore, each program in the Academy is delivered via live, monthly webinars, group coaching calls, one-on-one coaching calls, recordings, and our monthly newsletter called The Edge”

Practice Makes The Difference — We’re all creatures of habit comfortable in our routines. Our routines inhibit innovation and forward progress. In the Academy, every month there is a 30-day Action Plan that causes bankers to practice what they’ve recently learned refining and honing strategies, processes and behaviors.

Greater Accountability — 30 Day Action Plans empower sales managers to set expectations with their teams, then follow through with coaching to insure each banker is refining their strategies and behaviors.

The Sales Honing® Academy Delivery Platform Is Robust and Without Comparison:

If you’re like most bankers in the Sales Honing® Academy, you’ve been through tons of sales training in your career. You don’t need any more sales training. However, you do understand the market is changing, customer behaviors are changing, and you appreciate and recognize the need to refine and “hone” how you go about soliciting and closing business.

The delivery of the Academy occurs through multiple channels delivered exclusively by Ray:

Easy, anytime access to Ray

Minimally time-intrusive

One, live webinar each month

One, live group coaching call each month

One-on-one phone coaching calls

30-Day Action Plans each month

Tons of tools, worksheets, resources, blueprints, dashboards

Quick Reference Guides

All sessions recorded

The Edge – Our monthly newsletter

The Sales Honing® Academy is ideal for any banker that truly wants to work smarter, win more business and who is open-minded enough to recognize that your years of experience are as much an asset as they are a liability.

Money Back GuaranteeWe’re absolutely confident that this will be a career-transforming experience. Here's our invitation to you: Attend monthly sessions and complete all the homework for four months, and if you aren't 100% satisfied with your improvement, you may discontinue, and I'll give you a full refund. No kidding.

Need More Reasons to Join Our Growing Community of Forward-Thinking Bankers?

1. We’ll Help You Become Self-Sufficient

Unlike traditional event-style sales training programs that are delivered to a bank, the Sales Honing® Academy is installed in a bank so that a sustained lift in performance is possible from sustained use of the materials, strategies, and tools provided. We want our clients to be self-sufficient and fully capable of maintaining and reinforcing the strategies, processes, and tools provided in the Sales Honing® Academy on their own. Once installed, our clients are fully capable of training all future new hires on the Sales Honing® Academy content, strategies, and tools. Our goal is to support our clients to become self-sufficient so that everything provided with The Sales Honing® Academy becomes embedded in your culture.

2. Respects Your Bankers "Yet Another Sales Training?"

Your seasoned staff grimaces. It sounds and feels punitive. However, “sales honing” acknowledges and respects your commercial bankers track-record of success yet also acknowledges that the world is changing too rapidly for anyone to rest on their laurels or work history. From a psychological perspective, the value proposition of “honing sales” is easily understand and more easily bought into by you commercial banking team.

3. Learn from Ray Adler ─ Respected Banking Expert

For many reasons, there is no other transformational experience like this. But one inescapable advantage is the leadership and sharing by Ray Adler himself. Ray shares his expertise in organizational change, leadership, sales management, consultative selling strategies, branding and differentiation based on 19 years of having high performing regional, business and community banks as his customers.

4. Consistent with How People Really Learn

Research shows that people forget 80-90% of what they learn in traditional one and two-day event-style training. The Sales Honing Academy uses frequent, bite-sized modules delivered monthly for a full-year with coaching and other forms of support to reinforce learning. This is the way people learn best—and the way Ray has learned to ingrain his coaching.

5. Avoids the Disruption of Lengthy, Day-Long Sales Training

Many institutions are reluctant to disrupt the workplace with absences for lengthy training that can last days. Few banks can afford to have their key producers MIA. The Academy’s monthly webinars and one-hour coaching modules are convenient, manageable and doable. And they’re all recorded.

6. Like a Buffet, There’s Something for Everyone

Senior bankers refine and hone what they know to produce even better results. Junior bankers learn positive, productive strategies and behaviors without picking up bad habits from senior bankers. B and C players become more focused, strategic, and disciplined. A-players appreciate the emphasis on refinement verses “teaching.” Ray does not believe in a “one-size-fits-all” approach and encourages bankers to focus on honing the strategies that are right for their market and each banker.

7. Transforms Bankers from Order Takers to Trusted Advisors

80% of quality commercial business is won on the 5th to 20th sales attempt. Yet sadly, 48% of bankers will right of the prospect if there’s no financial package to be had or no immediate deal. That’s not how trusted advisors develop relationships and shines a light on an industry-wide need to help bankers develop the mindset, strategies and behaviors of trusted advisors.

8. The Academy Is the Only One Of its Kind

The Sales Honing® Academy is the only Academy in the country dedicated to sharpening the marketing, consultative sales and negotiation strategies of commercial banking teams. The delivery format is unique and based on research and offers commercial bankers a level of support and access to transformational tools that has no comparison.

We’re saving a valuable seat for you, but don’t wait as the Academy may be completely filled up.

Don’t miss out! See you in April.

At the end of the day change is inevitable, continued success isn’t. Commercial bankers (like all of us) are creatures of habits and benefit immensely by removing the blinders, looking at things with fresh perspectives and seeing new opportunities to develop quality business and deepen existing relationships.